The Finish

by Jade Eby

  I sit on the deck swing and hold Joey close to my chest. He's sucking on his thumb, his eyes opening and closing the way only babies do when they're fighting sleep.

  Why isn't this real? Why isn't this my life? I want to live in this dream forever, holding the sweetness to me like it will never go away.

  "Daddy, you're home!" the little girl crows from the sandbox.

  Carter walks through the gate I didn't know existed. He's older. A version I'll never get to see. His hair has salt and peppered but in a way that makes him more handsome than I've ever seen him. He smiles and picks our daughter up, twirling her in the air. She giggles and hugs him close to her.

  "You're full of sand, Caylee girl," he says, putting her back down.

  She goes back to playing and he comes closer, his smile even wider for me, if it's even possible.

  "There's my best girl," he leans over and kisses me on the forehead and does the same to Joey.

  "How was your day?" I ask, not sure how to play this new role. This is unlike anything I've ever experienced. It's like living in a real-life Leave it to Beaver episode.

  "It was good. We got the Apollo United Bank bid - so things will be picking up soon."

  "That's great," I say, trying to put together the pieces of this dream life.

  He reaches out his arms. "I'll take Joey if you need to finish dinner."

  I don't want to let go of him. I don't want to give him to this man I'm skeptical of. But this isn't real life - it has to be okay, right?

  Joey's body is weightless as Carter lifts him from my grip. I smile cautiously and go inside to the kitchen (my dream kitchen, of course) and find that there's a roast in the crock pot already. Fictional me has everything figured out.

  If only the real me did.

  Spinning around the kitchen, I try to guess which cabinet fictional me would have put plates. Right side, above the countertop with the coffee machine and bouquet of roses (seriously? Roses? What the hell did I do to fictional Carter?). I open the cabinet and deep navy ceramic plates, bowls and coffee mugs stare back at me.

  This isn't a dream. I've died. I'm dead and this is my afterlife, with all the things I was denied in reality. I don't know how or when, but I know that if this is what it's like to die, I want it to be true.

  I want to be dead over and over and over again.

  Bringing four plates out of the cabinet - no three, Joey can't possibly use a ceramic plate - I set them on the counter. Three sets of silverware. Three glasses.

  I arrange them at the table like I always imagined I would do when I had a family to care for. To cook for. To love.

  I smile at the normalness of it all.

  When I look back to the backyard, all is as it should be. Caylee playing like a child should. Carter rocking Joey back and forth.

  "Dinner time!" I say through the screen door.

  Caylee comes running and I kiss her on the head as she bops through the door. Carter hands Joey back to me when he gets inside.

  "I'm starving," he says.

  "Then it's a good thing I have a giant roast cooking."

  He grins and kisses me, full-on, little Joey smudged between us, sleeping. "You always did know the way to my heart."

  "With three pounds of meat, potatoes and carrots?"

  "Exactly," he says.

  He cleans up, tells me to sit down with the kids and brings us all our dinner.

  We eat like I've never eaten before, in contentedness. Small talk that carries the weight of the world in so few syllables.

  This is the life I should have had.

  After dinner we mosey to the living room and that's when the air in the room starts to shift. It's imperceptible at first. Just a slight change. Like minutes before a storm is about to break.

  Joey starts to cry in my arms. Wailing, life-ending cries that are unfamiliar to my every nerve ending. What do I do? Doesn't fictional me know how to handle this sort of thing?

  I pull up my shirt, and raise him to my right nipple.

  Carter looks at me like I'm crazy. "What are you doing? You haven't breast fed him since the day he came home from the hospital. It's creepy as hell, I told you that. Where's his bottle?"

  The switch in his voice. An octave lower than all his words today. Something isn't what it seems.

  I go to the kitchen, Joey still wailing in my arms. I open cabinet after cabinet trying to find a bottle. Something, anything to put me back on the right track.

  "What the fuck is going on with you? What are you looking for?" Carter stomps into the kitchen, a beer in his right hand.

  Where'd the beer come from? How is this all crumbling so fast?

  Because you're not dead. This is just Carter's way of making you suffer in silent, torturing, pain.

  "Where's his bottle?" I ask, desperate.

  "Same place it always is, Tawny. Did you hit your head? Just get him to shut the fuck up. I can't take the crying."

  "I'm trying…" I say, still not knowing where the "same place as it always is" actually is.

  "Give him to me, I'll shut him up," Carter says walking toward me.

  "No!" I shout. Over my dead body.

  "Jesus, Tawny, just give him to me."

  "I said no. You're not gonna hurt him," I say.

  Carter flinches like I've physically slapped him. His scowl deepens. He comes toward me and I put all of my force into protecting the child in my arms. My son.

  He tries to pull Joey out of my arms, but I'm not giving him any real estate. I won't give in, no matter how hard he tries. He will have to pry my lifeless fingers away from this precious child.

  "Give. Him. To. Me."

  I skirt around Carter and back into a corner. "No."

  A hand finds my leg and Caylee has me in an iron grip. I can't let go of Joey, though.

  "Daddy, please don't," Caylee pleads with Carter.

  He smacks her across the face so hard she falls backward onto the tile floor with a plop.

  This is not happening. Not again. Not ever.

  And just like that, there's something weighted in my hand. Something I can't hold while holding my son. When I look down, it's the same .45 I held in my hand not so long ago.

  I know what needs to be done, but can I do it? With my two fictional children clinging to me, like I'm their lifeline?

  You are their lifeline, Tawny. You have to do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

  I raise the gun. I don't aim, I don't look at him when I pull the trigger. I let the shot ring out and everything goes black.

  The water has gone ice cold - it pricks my skin like needles. I choke on it running over my face, drowning me.

  It was a dream. Of course it was a dream.

  I slide down the tiled shower wall and curl up on the floor. It's disgusting, dirty and I don't care.

  I want to die.

  * * *

  I fidget on the leather couch in Carla's plush lobby area, waiting for her to open her door and call me in. After passing out and having the nightmare with Carter, I called her. I need better medication. Heavy, all encompassing drugs to make sure that never happens again. I can't deal with it anymore.

  "Tawny? You ready?"

  I look up and Carla's smile soothes the hard edge in my bones. "Yes."

  "Come on back," she says, gesturing me into her office.

  I sit across from her, grabbing the pillow and stuffing it in my arms. For some reason, this pillow has become a source of comfort when I'm talking to her. Like it's an extra layer of protection against the feelings that always come out.

  "I have to say, your call had me quite concerned. What's going on?"

  I tell her about the dream. How real it felt to me. How I had to kill Carter all over again.

  She writes things down on her steno pad furiously. When she's done, she looks up at me, her face blank. She's the hardest person to read.

  "That sounds like an awful nightmare. But I'm not surprised. You've been progressing quite nicely. Setbacks are bound to happen, bu
t you came to me and that's whats important."

  This doesn't feel like progression. This feels like I'm falling all the way back to my life with him.

  "I can't do it, doc. I didn't want to wake up, you know? I wanted to never have to breathe again. I hated it. Having to choose."

  She nods. "This isn't the first nightmare like this. Your brain is still trying to make sense of the shooting. It manifests in different ways. This is one of them. Remember that almost every nightmare you've had like this results in the same ending - you having to shoot your husband to save someone. In this case it was you and your dream-children."

  I shake my head. "I don't get why I can't get them to stop. I get it. I shot him to save myself. But this one was so different… I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to shoot him."

  "You had to. If you didn't shoot him in the dream, what would have happened?"

  I swallow. I don't want to think about it. I shake my head.

  "Tawny, look at me."

  I do.

  "What would've happened?"

  I clutch the pillow tighter. "He was going to kill them. And me," I whisper.

  "Exactly. You were doing what you had to in order to survive."

  "Make them stop. Please."

  She purses her lips. "You know I can't make them stop. We have to work through this together. And we will. You're doing so great."

  "Can't you give me something? A drug or…"

  She sets her steno pad on the table beside her. "You know I don't work like that. Your guilt for killing Carter is still eating at you. And that's completely normal for survivors to feel that way. But we need to work harder on getting you past that. Once you accept what you've done and learn to get past it, the nightmares will ease up. I can't promise they'll ever go away, but we can work toward that."

  She makes it sound so easy. How do I get past this? How will I ever get past killing the man I loved?

  She reads my mine. "You can and will get past this, Tawny. We've been working together for a few months now and I think it would benefit you to visit a support group. There are several fantastic groups in the area. Many women who have been where you are. I think it would help the healing process to talk about these things with other survivors."

  I shake my head no. "I'm not ready. I can barely leave the house as it is. I don't… I can't be with other people."

  She picks her pad up and writes something down. Sometimes I want to grab it right out of her hands and read what deep, dark thoughts she has about me. What would it say?

  Freak who can't get her shit together? Husband killer with a guilty conscious?

  "I know you're going to do what you want, but I strongly encourage that you at least go to one meeting and see what you think. If you don't feel like it's helpful, then no harm no foul. But if you find your story in one of these other women, maybe it will give you the courage to share your own."

  She gets up and goes to her filing cabinet. She rifles through it until she finds whatever she's looking for. Pulls out a few papers.

  "Here are the group names, times and places they meet. Do with it what you will," she says, handing me the papers. "Let's meet again in a few weeks, unless you feel you need to come sooner than that, okay?"

  "I'm going to be normal one day, right? I'm not always going to feel like I want to stay in bed and die?"

  She does something she's never done. Covers my hand with hers. Somehow, I think this is not something she does often, if ever. She's extending a part of herself to me. "You will get better. I promise you that."

  "Thank you," I whisper.

  And for the first time, it's a promise I have a feeling won't be broken.

  April - 2009

  This is the fifth time I've driven to one of the buildings the support groups meet at. I've never gone in. The intention is always there, especially when Carla asks me after every session we've had if I've gone to one yet.

  I just can't bring myself to actually go in. Instead, I watch the women walk in, their heads down. Some look around like whoever they're running from is there to find them. When they walk out some are red-faced, solemn. Some hold their heads up higher. It's always a wash on whether or not they're better once they get back into their cars and head home to whatever life they're living.

  There've been times, when I'm sitting in the truck completely still, I see flashes of Carter's red plaid shirt he loved. Just a tiny flicker in the corner of my eye and when I turn, nothing's there. Of course, nothing is ever there.

  But I swear in these moments, it's like he hasn't been gone at all. He's just been hiding, waiting for the right moment to resurface and ruin everything.

  Maybe some of these women looking over their shoulders are the same as me. Left their lovers or abusers but still feel like every step is scrutinized.

  Because when you've been watched every day for most of your life, you realize that feeling will never quite go away.

  Just do it you pathetic bitch! I can't believe how much of a pussy you are.

  No. Not now. Not when I'm trying to focus on other things. He can't do this to me.

  I live in your head, Tawny. I can do whatever the fuck I want. Can't even get up the courage to go inside. What a waste.

  "Stop!" I say aloud. "Just stop it. You. Are. Not. Real."

  I'm as real as you are alive. I'm telling you to stop acting like a whiny fucking baby and go into that building.

  I shake my head. Is this me? Or Carter? Or are the two of our identities so wrapped up in each other's that we've become one?

  Just do—

  "I'm going! Now leave me alone."

  He's quiet after that. There are a couple possibilities here. 1. I'm still going crazy (most likely). 2. My brain is using Carter's voice to push me into things or 3. My dead husband is a spirit/ghost/other being and is haunting me (least likely).

  I step down out of the truck I still have a hard time calling mine. Put one foot in front of another and walk into the building. There's a circle of chairs set up. Some women mill around in the center. There's a long table set up against the wall full of finger foods and a punch bowl.

  Standing in the doorway, my brain tells me to back away. To go back to the truck. I don't belong here. But my feet stay planted where they are and my heart beats so fast, I'm afraid it might burst right out of my chest.

  "New here?"

  I turn around and am face to face with a tall woman with a blonde pixie cut. "Um, yeah."

  She smiles and it lights up her entire face. "Welcome. Don't be scared - we don't bite. That hard."

  I give her a small smile. As if I haven't heard that one before.

  "It's an ice-breaker joke they tell us to use. Probably not the most appropriate for this group, though."

  I laugh. Like an actual real-life laugh. I haven't heard that sound in… I don't even remember how long.

  "I'm Emily," she says, extending a hand.

  I take it. "Tawny."

  She looks at me for a minute like she recognizes me. It wouldn't be unusual. I was in the papers for weeks. My picture plastered all over the front page.

  If she does make the connection, she chooses not to say anything. "C'mon, I'll introduce you around."

  I find that my feet actually follow hers. We step into the center of the circle and several of the women turn to face us.

  "Hello, ladies. We have a new face tonight. This is Tawny."

  "Hey, Tawny," a few of them say in unison.

  "Hi," I squeak.

  Jesus. Have I lost my ability to act like a normal human being in a group of people?

  Emily points to each girl, telling me their names. I won't remember them all, but I try to study each of their faces. Most of them, I've seen from a distance, in the safety of the truck. I don't think I'll tell them I know them better than they think. It's creepy.

  "We still have a few minutes before we'll start, but sit down, make yourself comfy and we'll give you the official run down on how things work here," Emily says and r
ushes off to a woman walking through the door.

  A beautiful black woman takes the seat next to me. "The first time can be a little daunting, but once you get through today, you'll want to come back."

  I nod, not sure what I should say back.

  "This is probably super inappropriate… but you look like that girl who —"

  "I am."

  I think she's going to be repulsed but instead she smiles. "Gotcha. I'm not sure if I should high five you or something."

  The girl that sits next to her nudges this woman in the ribs. "Kenya, that's rude."

  "It's okay," I mumble. "She's not the first person to tell me that."

  In fact, I can't seem to stop the flow of letters that are shoved into my mailbox. Letters of women telling me they wish they had the courage to do what I did. I didn't open a single one until this month. I figured they were all hate mail. Rose opened one and pressed me to read it. I was surprised at the way these letters made me out to be a superhero.

  I'm not. I'm a ki… no. Carla's voice stops me in my tracks. She told me I have to stop calling myself that.

  I'm a survivor.

  "Ladies!" Emily's voice booms through the crowd. "It's time to start. Opening prayers, please."

  Kenya's hand slips into my left one. The seat on my right is unoccupied. I don't know what to do with my other hand so I put it in my lap.

  "God, there are so many women struggling to find peace right now. They are living under the guise that they are safe, secure and loved. But God, they are hurting. They are living under the weight and fear of violence in their own homes at the hands of their fathers, brothers, spouse, significant others. We ask that you think of those being affected by violence. We ask that you offer a hand of protection to them. Give them hope and faith to persevere. To do what they can to survive. God, we know that we ask a lot from you, but today, please keep us in your thoughts. Amen."

  A murmur of Amens pass through the room.

  I don't believe in God. I don't think he or she or whatever it is would let things like this happen. But I don't begrudge those that believe in a higher power. I think we all need something to believe in. The thing is - hearing how powerfully Emily says this prayer, moves me. It makes me almost believe that there is someone up there listening.